Fruit Machine Chat

got this from three keys on c&r, expected something friendlier than tiers of spoilers with £1, £2, £3, £4, £5, £10, £20

i fluked the first two Qs and won £2 (which i already had from the swag)
bah

Cheers - you've saved me the hassle of pursuing this. (Not that I was going to anyway)

Is that it!! As its nigh-on impossible to get, i'd have expected it to dump the hopper, tell me this weeks lottery numbers, phone my missus and tell her i'm leaving her for a 17 year old chavette with huge norks, and then award me with eternal life.... Not that i'm suggesting that they (GW) might need to rethink the millionaires row situation at all.... honest

agreed, i got the last key from the fuse bonus game which also had a swagbag which would have given me the chance for a mighty £3.

Last time I played this I got something like 265 moves and still hadn't won anything. I was on it so long the bacteria in my water had actually evolved into fish by the time I finished the game

give an old copper a chance

For me, the realisation that the game is by Games Warehouse tells you all you need to know. I never really take much notice of machine and game manufacturers but looking at all these GW games together, I now realise they have been responsible for 8 or 9 of the WORST games I have ever seen or had the misfortune to play (albeit briefly in most cases):

http://www.gwhl.co.uk/images/GPSmartV.2.pdf

What a Rogues Gallery that lot is! (Word Up aside of course :wink

i'd have to disagree here, to my mind many of these games are enjoyable to play and you can double your money pretty easily on most of them. if this is not enough for you some also have decent prizes available. i have personally won £5 or more from a single game on:
battleships (new)
bullseye (but not for a long time)
quids for grids
hangman haunted
scrabble (also has hero worship of me)
word cube
word up
dungeon dosh
pints make prizes
magnificent 7s (£9 off 50p last night)
sudoku
trivial pursuit2
golden boot (not for ages either)
i spy

to me this is the best cabinet out there for enjoyability, the games by gwhl are more reliant on skill than many of the Q&A clones on itbox/gamebox so imho i prefer a pint dancing around a paragon than a half pint on itbox playing only WU then thinking "there must be something worth playing on this"

I have to agree with Mr Satis. The enjoyment I get from playing a machine is linked directly to how much money I can get out of it. Of course good graphics and ideas help , but they are secondary.Also the speed with which you get a decent win is important. Slow machines are excruciating machines to play, ultimately losing through sheer boredom & loss of concentration.The manufacturers should concentrate on quality and not quantity.Most of the games on GW are utter bilge , but at least their cabinets pay out now!(USED TO BE FAULTY)

unknownpseudonym wrote:i'd have to disagree here, to my mind many of these games are enjoyable to play and you can double your money pretty easily on most of them. if this is not enough for you some also have decent prizes available

It's all a matter of opinion of course and for me it's more importantly a matter of objectives. I play the quiz machines with profit as the number one objective with fun/playability/visuals and sound etc. a long way down my list of priorities. Clearly in a perfect world the games would be both potentially profitable AND enjoyable but to my mind the balance has gone far too far towards the playability end of the spectrum. I have a full time job so any time spent playing machines means there is an opportunity cost in terms of something else I can't do so wasting an hour on some game to maybe win £1 or £2 is simply of no interest to me. My most lucrative game ever is really quite dull to play but I'd still rather have that any time.

I am no apologist for the cabinet that you dislike, the ItBox, as this for me has deteriorated appallingly in the last couple of years from being a 'must play' box to one I will only play if I am in the pub waiting to meet someone etc. It has far too many games where winning anything decent is a hopeless task, plus the abomination that is Millionaire 2006.

My problem with many of the Games Warehouse games, usually seen on Paragons I believe, is that they don't even have the compensation of being much fun to play while they s-l-o-w-l-y extract your money. Clearly this is a much more subjective question, in that one man's enjoyable meat is another man's deadly dull poison, but I'd struggle to find anything positive to say about:

- Lord of the Bling/Golden Boot - same basic game, both equally likely to kill you on some completely unknowable fact after you've taken 15 minutes to win all of £1

- Spend It Like... - comfortably amongst the worst games I've ever seen

- Cops 'n' Robbers - OK as a concept but like QuizMaster has mentioned, it can take 15-20 minutes to win nothing and as we now know the extremely rare Millionaires Row feature is a waste of time as well

- Trivia for Dummies - do I really need to say anything about this one??

- Snakes & Ladders Gold - the Gamesnets have a different Snakes and Ladders which can occasionally be worth a go but this one has always proved impossibly difficult to win on every time I've played it

- Hex Appeal - good idea, never ever offers a decent prize

It's not all dross - Moneycomb can reach a winnable level, Trivial Pursuit is fine if you can recognise when it's worth playing, Word Up is a brilliantly-designed concept if no longer much of a payer, ... - but on the whole I'd have to say that I could happily never see another Games Warehouse game again!

P.S. Six lightbulbs! Woo-hoo!

I had a go on a Paragon today and it is all changed from what I saw before I went away.
Where is WU? And SQ? And G8? Those games were good especially Space Quest.

Has SQ gone forever? I was really good at that game.

Also TriviA For Dummies is easy to learn and the end game is normally easy until the top level.

I don't like that Pints for Prizes game. It is easy until one level before the money when it gives you a choice of 3 impossible bonuses.

got millionaire's row again and got up to £5. i also got the tiers wrong in my first post. after 5 it goes to 7 then 10 then 15 then 20 (i think)

The last few times i've played this magnificent game i've had about 3 or 4 of the easiest q's in the world followed by the planet's ultimate spoilers,i mean stuff you've got no chance on(well ok 1 in 3).Nothing in between.No progression. Nada.So fair play to your 300 moves etc.Is this because the ones i've been playing are shafted/re-programmed or are you lot total whizzkids out of my league.Really, i need to know.
incidentally would it not be more realistic if the copper just shoots you in the back when the game's up?

foxy

I haven't played this one in ages as I tend to 'drop' games which I recognise as a waste of time early on (and I've very rarely been proved wrong when doing so). What I do remember on this game is that if you are able to answer fast it brings two benefits:

(1) you build up more of a lead on the copper while answering the easy questions

(2) you don't necessarily lose a huge amount if you do get a question wrong

Something I have learned over the years is the ability to nearly always recognise a question that I don't/won't know the answer to immediately. As soon as one of these appeared on Cops and Robbers I would just hit A, B or C randomly - if it's right you get a bonus few moves, if wrong then the amount the copper catches you up is minimised.

By doing this I was able to get to 300 odd moves on an early go. As this only got me £1 and had taken about 20 minutes, I realised the game was yet another dud and I haven't played it again since.

BTW, talking of unknowable spoilers, check this out for a nice new category that I spotted on Countdown yesterday - this one could run and run:

Q. Which of the cemeteries where these (minor) celebrities were laid to rest is last alphabetically?

A - ...
B - ...
C - ...
D - ...

Yes, in a few seconds you are expected to be able to remember the names of the four CEMETERIES where certain B movie actors and long-forgotten singers were buried and then rank them in alphabetical order. Unbelievable!!